The New York Times is launching a Chinese-language news site, cn.nytimes.com, on Thursday. Aimed at “educated, affluent, global citizens,” the site will publish about 30 articles a day in categories like world affairs, business and culture.
NYT foreign editor Joseph Kahn tells Media Decoder that “about two-thirds of the content [will] be translated from Times articles and one-third [will] be written by Chinese editors and local freelance journalists.”
The site’s servers will operate outside China and Kahn says “we’re not tailoring it to the demands of the Chinese government, so we’re not operating like a Chinese media company.” The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times already operate Chinese-language sites, and at times the Chinese government has blocked them. The BBC’s Chinese-language site has been consistently blocked.
Tech In Asia was the first blog to discover the account that the NYT created on Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo, in honor of cn.nytimes.com’s launch. The paper’s first message was “The New York Times Chinese Edition begins operation today, and tomorrow will begin releasing news. We welcome our new friends and followers and look forward to engaging with you.” It now has 10,740 followers.
